Jim Pallas

WIth Gallries in Chicago and Detroit, George N'Namdi is a pioneer art dealer who was among he first to introduced African-American  collectors to 20th entury Africa-AMerican artists.

"Art Giants in Detroit" is a sixteen artworks homage by Jim Pallas to a selection* of the sturdy creative souls who have remained to work and contribute to the mostly hidden life of the Detroit community.  Aside from his notorious hitch hiking sculptures, these are the first portraits Pallas, 71, has created.

These paintings follow a strict format of directly lit, emotionally neutral  faces, no make up, looking at the viewer and cropped so that only eyes, nose and mouth fill the frame. The works are four feet square and  made of urethane foam on a substrate of expanded styrene.  All are painted with pigmented epoxy.   Although they look like paintings, especially when photographed with a flash,
I regard them as sculptures because the surfaces are very dimensional.  In this aspect they are like reliefs but are unlike reliefs in that the three dimensional shapes of the surface have no correlation to the painted facial features. 

*David Barr
Jef Bourgeau
Joy Colby
Sergio De Giusti
Tyree Guyton
Michael Hall
Alvaro Jurado
Gerhardt Knodel
Sue Marx
Charles McGee
Dennis Nawrocki
George N'namdi
William Rauhauser
Gilda Snowden
Robert Sestok
Lila Silverman